A guy’s guide: what to pack in your gym bag

If your bathroom cabinet has little more than a half-used moisturiser, a tube of toothpaste and a fragrance your mum bought you for Christmas five years ago, chances are your gym bag is also lacking not packing. But all that sweat can be tough on skin, and, let’s be honest, heading straight to the pub after spin is the quickest way to lose a friend or two. So what do you need? The ultimate gym bag edit, that’s what. Aka how to go from weights to dates in, oh, around five minutes.

The deodorant

No man’s gym bag should be without deo, but don’t just go for any old thing. Swerve the stuff that smells like a teenage boy’s bedroom and choose a clean, neutral scent. Nivea for Men Black & White Deodorant is a no-white-marks formula, which means you can get dressed and to your desk without staining your shirt.

The shower gel

Why would you lug around shampoo, conditioner, shaving gel and body wash when you could get yaself a bottle of this stuff! A nifty little all-in-1, it’s loaded with carbon, which acts like a magnet to get rid of that post-bench-press bacteria – because you don’t want bac-ne now, do you?

The hair gel

A quick run-in with your leisure-centre hairdryer can leave hair more Harry Potter than Harry Styles. A gym sesh is no excuse not to look suave. To get ready in a jiffy, apply a little of this wax to fingertips and work it through your hair. It’s affordable enough to buy one pot for your bathroom and another for your bag.

The multitasking moisturiser

If you’ve been skipping moisturising your skin because you don’t want to lug a big bottle of cream around, get in the multitasking game. This heavy hitter works as a hand cream, body cream and face cream, so you’ll never have to suffer that too-tight-skin feeling after hitting the pool pre-work.

The sweet scent

Nothing says ‘I haven’t just come from the gym’ quite like a fragrance. This one is light enough not to stink out the entire changing room and comes in a gym-bag-friendly 50ml. Its blend of grapefruit peel, bay leaves and olive tree wood strikes the balance between work and party-friendly, so you can wear it wherever you’re going after that weight session.